essays | fiction | poetry | photography | art
For the good of the country we claimed their land & property. It was necessary for the people.
In the southern heat,
giddiness spread in a slick of sweat.
A stale and sweet smell embraced the girls
as they danced and danced
and would not stop dancing.
They rose up overnight
like a hallucination—
misshapen, pock-marked, deformed
littering the lawn in the dozens.
and there, by the weekend-quiet school, at the edge of the pavement, was the mouse
lying on its side, a small trickle of blood / from its open mouth
we can sit next to each other
looking out in the same direction
at our life smudges
together
You offer me tea (a cardigan, story)
and someone else to make it,
which we all
pretend not to notice.
The air is suddenly sweet-smoked and humming,
and I’m back in the incense-wreathed
Lanes of 90s Brighton
They have agreed that this is an emergency. Signs need not be heeded in an emergency, they’re quite sure.
The plane goes to the gym every morning
before work and holds that plank.
Now I’m a chrysalis,
neither caterpillar boy
nor butterfly man.
Fried dough dishes are a universal constant.
The colour revealed itself like crab meat
only a wound, something to lick clean
From Prince Harry’s TMI memoir to Barbara Kingslover’s Appalachian bildungsroman, the team at Porridge share their favourite novels and non-fiction reads of 2023.
I imagined the horse bolting so it did,
skidded along the canyon’s edge while I watched.
There
cars are white,
the sun is not for bathing under.
She would never allow a condiment
without a saucer or a spoon,
tea without a pot,
a pop sock and skirt.
She travels the world, storms the Venice Biennale, exhibits at the Guggenheim, Tate, Pompidou – you name it, parties with the grimy glitterati in LA, Madrid, São Paulo, breaks a Sotheby’s sale record and dazzles the fawning curators and collectors at every chandeliered benefit dinner.
I covered my eyes and my
tears tasted of metal.
gluey congee cooked with
yellow ginger
salted pork
thousand-year-old eggs
constantly stirred to make sure
it doesn’t stick to the bottom
Mom’s in charge and tells us to watch how it’s done,
tucking and folding
until she holds above our heads, like a baptized child,
our exemplar tamale
“Just like that!” ¡Perfecto!
No one saw the tattoo coming. In high school, I was not voted Most Likely To Get Inked. I was not voted Seventeenth Most Likely To Get Inked. No, I was the girl for whom they had to invent a new yearbook category: Most Likely To Attend Seminary. At sleepovers, I squiggled under the covers…
his Superkings fan over
a firm hand grip in sunburst
gilding the bonfire
cherry red
As if by sticking up taut yellow tape
They could control the space
Like some kind of boxing match
Where a ring-side bell
Could take a firm grip of time
The tingle of feet in an ice
cold bed is finally enough to get me out
at dusk, all shabby chic
I convince Landa to be my accomplice as she culls rotten lettuce heads. They let Landa wear a knife on her belt. She has a weak heart and I think destroying crops makes her feel powerful.
White fabric sagging
Exposed lipsticked mouth
Small exposed mouth screaming
Exposed mouth with nose ring
Gravity balances on my shoulders,
tosses back the balls while I wait
for their sandy pop in my palms.
I get lighter by the day.
the sound of sliced cabbages
shadows painted on the floor
brick façades & blunt gables
a swarm of rats follow a lone woman
wherever she sleepwalks
all bedsheet ladders lead to you
You reached for the branch
without looking at me as I
signalled you to back away,
to veer away from the tree,
where a snake in full makeup
had hit its mark, awaiting a cue.
Last night, I dreamt about them again. All moon-faced and lovely and it stirred that familiar ache.
Introduction February 2014. Just as Russia was invading and annexing Crimea, the world was watching another case of Putin showing off, also in the Black Sea region: the Winter Olympics in Sochi. So far the most expensive Games on the record, they were meant to demonstrate Russia’s opulence and grandeur, and, of course, to highlight…
The first potatoes I loved were the dehydrated shreds sold in cereal box-style cartons at Key Foods. My mother gave them some delicacy, stirring in milk, butter, salt. On holidays her mashed potatoes were perfect, and doted on accordingly. They were adjusted hourly for flavour and texture, refrigerated overnight, and reheated slowly on the day….
We’re hit with a waft of espresso. The thunder of grinding coffee beans. The high-pitched hiss of steamed milk. Our wish is granted.
There is something in her hands. Something in a large Pyrex dish. It is hot, very hot. She nearly drops it on the floor but instead the kitchen work top catches it. The dish itself doesn’t smash. It isn’t a big enough drop for that. She looks down at it, trying to work out what it is.
A Chisinau bus will teach you the city. The Moldovan capital’s network of these vehicles, and its trolleybuses and marshrutkas – the decrepit minivans, unchanged since Soviet days – could take you anywhere, for nearly nothing. Mostly you paid in physical stress. Riders crammed into spaces meant for people half their size; young mothers loaded…
My mother loved her garden: the Lily of the Nile, the roses, the lemon tree, the hydrangea at her bedroom window. Hydrangeas flower blue or pink depending on your soil – hers were always blue. The weeds, however, she did not love. “A weed is just a flower growing in the wrong place,” she would…
We pass plates of kawage, kibbeh, moutabal
between us around the semi-circle of table.
A True Crime Story Which Never Happened I [hereafter known as The Author] have been considering truth and fact. Truth, as something malleable. Fact, as something that influences the changing of truths.[1] The Author has considered this in particular detail in relation to True Crime and the ways in which truth is manipulated here (no,…
Limonero Moon I had a sour thought, as if I bitinto a lemon, and the bitter mistsettled on my naked eye like dewor vinaigrette: the red eye weptand suppurated, pitying itself.I was a thought ungrateful, a thought sharpand zestless, pithy: what had given methe pip? The cloudy juice ran down my cheek. As in your…
Peregrine has put them up;
one, against one thousand. They
need eyes in the back of their head.
His eyes, forwards only, burning
on the brown-gold and white
pulsating flock.
And here I am, unsure of my value
Crushing myself through the doors
Ice and dirt crumbling from me
Leaving meltwater on the mat
like you are the aurora borealis, a thirsty balloon,
wanting and worthy of more air, ready to gorge
on forest fruits, and salt and garlic, and cinnamon,
like you are every season and its harvest
Our joke ran
that I would hand him the ladybird kite,
him in his little black windbreaker,
and I’d plead with him to hold on,
and he’d smile like all the world wasn’t enough,
My weight is
three black labradors lazing
a mummy moon bear
or a black and white ostrich
stick your worm-like head
to the surface of muddy waters
will yourself into existence
I grab the deck rail,
expecting a disturbance
—a pitching and yawing—
but the ferry glides smoothly
over the sea’s fleecy crimp,
like a brush through kid fibre.
They don’t make
houses pink and white
like coconut ice-cream.
They’re always plain, dull colors.
It’s all so easy
when it should be exhilarating.
The body wants to do the dropout boogie,
a way to just slowly spiral out
of reality and not include my self with its accessories
I see the cat before the cat sees me.
White with black splotches, a longhair.
Leaving the law behind it,
stealing easily as light fails
Everybody called her ‘a character’,
a regular in the library
in her shabby Barbour jacket
and crumpled hat perched
on hair dishevelled as a bird’s nest.
Reuniting with translator Polly Barton, Matsuda revisits similar themes in this new collection; across fifty-two stories, she tackles the pervasive misogyny faced by women in contemporary Japan and beyond.
Desire could drain a reservoir. Fear could empty a playground. And someone like her would be left to label the files.
The past peels me off like red pared down to
parent rock (think barn, cadaver, three-wheeled
wagon upended in the bee garden).
My hand slips—crushed pepper
fills the pot, the water is boiling
not simmering as you said, you said
I needed to be careful, but look now
“We are prompted to savour each word, carefully probing between our teeth to discover new morsels of meaning.”
That albino slug
looks like mobile marzipan,
bending its neck for a nap
in the stitchwort
tufted beside the road.
You slid the nit comb through my hair
then rinsed and laughed about how
you loved hunting them down
legs floating, brush of seaweed
bulging water moves us
up and down
the shore seems very far away
I wanted to be a part of their club, their conversations, their laughter. Eating, I decided, was my way in.
Stevie busies himself trying to match two blue pieces of sky. You watch him working the corners and the glands in your throat swell.
If you walk along a path
between forest and shore
between grains eroded by the sea
they were mountains once
I found that writing and art keep me sane, they’re like a room of my own in a time when I’m rarely alone.
Porridge 